Ferrante & Teicher - Blast Off! (1958)

Arthur Ferrante and Louis Teicher were one of the best-selling easy listening acts of the '60s, offering light arrangements of easily recognizable classical pieces, movie soundtrack themes, show tunes, and similarly compatible fare. While they were enjoying success on the concert circuit, Ferrante & Teicher had been experimenting with treated pianos, influenced by the ideas of avant-garde composer John Cage. By adding paper, sticks, rubber, wood blocks, metal bars, chains, glass, mallets, and other found objects to the string beds (among other techniques), the duo was able to produce a variety of bizarre sound effects that sometimes resembled percussion instruments, and other times produced a spacy, almost electronic sound. In the latter half of the '50s, they recorded several albums in this vein for Westminster, including 1958's Blast Off!, which you can enjoy here...